June 24, 2013

[A paragraph from Dad to Kinsey. It's included to followup into Kinsey's letter]
Kinsey,
"..... don't be too hard on your self. I like Elder Holland's talk last conference. "So be kind regarding human frailty, your own as well as that of those with whom you serve. . . . imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we.."
Remember that we are here to learn. Just don't make the same mistakes twice or more times. That's not learning or progressing. You'll do great. The language will come if you work on it and have faith."
-Dad

Thanks for the advice dad! thats great, i remember listening to that and thinking OUCH!! There´s another sting from Holland!
hola familia!!! Wow its great to hear from you guys. I´m sorry i´m not writing specific letters to a bunch of people, its difficult for me to concentrate on certain letters for a long time and hermana hansen is SO much faster than me at writing so i gotta get off when she gets off!! but i´m glad your week was fun, even though it was stressful. did you bring griz to the campout? a ride down the slide? i gotta know! but we didn´t get to watch the training meeting and no i wasn´t in the audience. it was midnight here so we´re watching it the 30th. but apparently there are new rules and new changes!! hahaa we read the white hand book everyday and its soooo old now. they need a new one.
my camera cord would be nice. but i can buy one  here i think. its just actually buying it is the problem. no tengo tiempo!
It´s really funny that you mention my room and expecting it to be cluttered! many times, whenever i drop food on the floor, i open my mouth to call for griz and remember that he´s not there!! hahaa old habits die hard i guess.
but honestly, this week has FLOWN by! no joke. and this week is already super busy so this transfers going to fly! i´m super scared. but apart from that, it was filled with so many miracles. I loved it so much!
My spanish is improving. I´m really good now at making people think I can speak spanish. I just smile and nod, always keeping hermana hansen in my pereferals (huh? don´t know how to spell that) and copy whatever she´s doing. plus i have a pretty good accent. not gonna lie. my norweigy (as hermana munden and i call her) is still working on me speaking more in lessons because honestly half the time I don´t even know what they´re talking about!! But it´s all good and it´s usually only an hour of torture.
hhahahaa so yesterday, i had some weird impressions. Remember, dad, when you said you had bishop impressions? well i had stinking TRAINER intuitions. scared. me. to. death. I wrote president about it and advized him not to do that. it´d be less stressful for the new baby and for him.
While contacting in Vicalvaro, Hermana Hansen y I contacted this man from Nigeria. He said he was baptized in 2000 and hasnt gone to church in a long time. We invited him to church and met with him the saturday before. He is the sweetest man ever and wanted answers to some questions he had from reading in the bible and in the book of mormon. He showed up on Sunday for church and he said he´ll be coming back to church! It was such a miracle meeting him.
As a personal goal, I wanted to contact everyone that I can that´s in the old carpeta de área that the elders left behind. Its been so much fun contacting these people! We haven´t had any success at setting up any appointments but I feel better that we´re contacting them. hahaaa i hand the phone over to hermana hansen whenever they go off in spanish and thank heavens we sound alike. i think they get really confused because i start by saying, hola! soy la hermana smith de la iglesia de jesucristo....and she ends with, oh soy hermana hansen...hahaa its pretty funny. but so many registro´s will say to contact him in this time or contact him in that time and they never do! its really irritating but i love it because its spring cleaning, as mom puts it.
I´ve run into a little hiccup, for me at least. We have an investigator, named Jorge, that has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and of José Smith and of everything, but he´s grown up very Orthodostic-ly (if that makes any sense) and he´s telling people that he´ll be baptized but he´ll still be an orthodox. Maybe because I grew up in the Church and I want them to be converted before they´re baptized its blinded me from his real desire, I don´t know!! My real thought is that we can´t stop them from being baptized when they believe everything but the mindset is not where it should be. I hope I make sense...thats just been a thought of my for the past couple of days.
OH this friday i have my first baptism!! its Inussa and he is such a gem! he is seriously the most chill guy. ever. I´m always doing something and jumping or whistling and I´ll ask him, esta animado??!!!! and he´ll say, in the most UN-animado voice, Sí, siempre animado. siempre felic. he´s the man. it´s awesome because he is ´´siempre animado´´ to do what the Lord´s asks us to do. oooh look for him on facebook!! his name is Inusboy, hhahahahaaa!!!
welp, thats all!! keep the letters coming !! i love hearing from people. you guys are awesome and i hope you have a fantastic week!! love you mucho!! beso´s from me!!
Hermana Kinsey Smith

June 17, 2013

Hola familia!!! oh and HAPPY FATHERS DAY!! We meant to celebrate it awesomely, but we were too busy knocking on doors and me kicking investigators. haha just kidding. actually not, just Inussa, cuz he says since i´m american, i´m gonna get so fat i won´t even be able to pick up my feet to walk. ESTE HOMBRE. plus i´m always eating pan de leche (this absolutely wonderful bread thing) whenever we see him. He even laughed at the thought of me running!! 
AARRGGGGHHHH!!! I tried telling him he´s giving me grey hairs. it doesn´t translate well in spanish. 
ahem. sorry. going on....
oh my this week was HOT. like REALLY HOT. like WAY WAY TOO HOT. 
and it´s june. 
madre mia.... (all the spaniards love using this phrase. its funny. reminds me of ABBA) i use it quite a bit and also ´´´no pasa nada´´. oh and ´´no sé´´ or ´´no entiendo´´. 
Ha, welp, not gonna lie, this week was a tough one. I was a little bit of a moody pants cuz of the heat and cuz we weren´t very busy. and my kind of busy is when we are booked with appointments and lessons. I have learned a lesson this week though: suck it up and go to work. oh and learning to have fun with everything. I felt that if we weren´t booked with lessons, then that means we aren´t successful as missionaries and i did NOT like that feeling!! I´ve had a talk with hermana hansen and munden (another missionary in the piso) and they said that contacting is all part of missionary work and why are you surprised that we go contacting, etc. duh, kinsey. its in our MISSIONARY PURPOSE and in our RECUERDE ESTO: INVITE OTHERS TO COME UNTO CHRIST. 
that is contacting. heehee. i know now :) But the great thing was terminating the week (terminar= to end. so we say terminate), looking at our weekly numbers and SEEING our numbers totalled. we could see that this week was our MOST successful week! I appreciated it mucho. I should´ve seen it coming. I think before my weeks were a little too unstressful and then BAM!! heavenly father pulls a whammy on me!! I´m grateful for this past week, because every small AND LONG trial will help me grow so much! By the end of my mission, i´m gonna be like 20 ft tall.
I am learning a great Christlike attribute from Hermana Hansen: patience! I don´t have a lot of patience for myself and sometimes for others, but mostly for myself. I never felt irritated about my spanish skills until this past week and Hermana Hansen was so amazing. She helped me and listened to me rant out my frustrations. and i ranted a lot. She even wrote a cute little note of encouragement to me in my planner. I love this girl. we´re gonna be neighbors one day. her boyfriend knut (like kenoot) got off his mission from england and we keep joking that he´s gonna set up his scottish companion with me. hahaa (remember mom, BIG FAT JOKE)
On a nicer note, Inussa has progressed so much. We have taught him all the lessons that we can before baptism from PME and now we are just teaching him more about Jesus Christ. Like I said last week, he doens´t know a lot about Jesus Christ, so I think any information we give him about Jesucristo, he absorbs. Just last night, we watched To This End Was I Born. It´s very dark, but very straight forward and plain. Oh, and we found out from him that his religious background is Muslim. But honestly, I don´t think he´s been a practicing Muslim for years. I thought that was very interesting. he´s a good man. i want all y´all to meet him. 
We have another investigator from Romania. His name is Gheorghe (something like that)....but in spanish it´s Jorge :) When we first started teaching him a couple of weeks ago, I thought he´d be one of those old stubborn European´s. But he´s soaked in everything that we´ve said and he said that he wanted to be baptized. He also has accepted each lesson we´ve given him, but many times we´ve been splitting them, because he likes to talk a lot. Oh and the europeans like to argue, so when we have a certain member with us in our lesson with them, its usually them arguing for about 75% of the lesson. at least i think they´re arguing, its just that when people talk here, they yell it and it sounds kind of angry sometimes....
We met a man on the street this past week and spoke to him for about an hour. Let me tell you, HE is a stubborn spaniard, madre mia... BUT! Hermana Hansen and I are a stubborn companionship!! He is a man in his 70´s and is grieving. His wife, who had a lot of belief, had died some time ago and he doesn´t want to believe anything. He won´t let us say prayers and he won´t take a book of mormon, but Hermana Hansen and I have so much faith in him. we think he has a book of mormon in his apartment, but he keeps changing his mind. We won´t be giving up. We can already see him as a very strong member of this church. I have to remember that I am a missionary and a Representative of Jesus Christ a lot whenever i´m around him. he keeps shoving his palm into my forehead HARD whenever i say, ´´ José, SABE QUE YO NO ENTIENDO. ´´ he also kept shoving his newspaper at us, so i took it and wrote a scripture in there for him (since he refused to take it) and shoved it back into his shirt pocket. It´s going to be a trying few weeks with him. but i´m having a ton of fun doing it ;)
I promise to send más fotos next week! I´m excited to hear from all of you with your written letters (AHEM- hint)! I hope you all remember how wonderful it is to be in this church, at this time. We are incredibly lucky to be the LATTER day saints, because it is the latter days. I remember a talk from elder holland and he talked about how a lot of missionaries will ask him when the second coming will happen. hahaaa his response was the best: ´´HELLO. Do you not know what the name of our church is?! it´s the church of Jesus Christ OF LATTER DAY SAINTS! We´re already there!´´ he is so right!! Events for the 2nd coming started when José smith had the first vision and when he translated the book of mormon. I love in Enos where Enos is praying to God with every fiber of his being and praying that the records be kept safe if the nefites were to fall into transgression. Read and study Enos! Everytime I read that book, I am reminded more and more of my purpose as a missionary. so much doctrine is squished into that one chapter.
i love you all so much!! i am SO grateful to be here and so happy. I am siempre tired, but its a happy tired:) i hope you all remember how much i love you and how much our Savior loves you. I have never been more closer to my savior and heavenly father than i have in these last few weeks. 
I pray for you all each and hope for the greatest success for this week. 
stay awesome!
loves y hugs
hermana smith
aka kinsey jo

June 10, 2013

que pasa...stupid computer...any whoo...just copy and paste the first part...

It was filled with so many miracles, big and small. I have truly never been so blessed in my life!  I love how the small and simple things are bringing to past amazing results. It was transfers this week and i was a little worried about one of us leaving, but apparently i need to learn more from mi norweigy compy so we´re together still :) we did a little happy dance. 

Our investigator, Inussa, is doing so well! We were waiting for an opportunity to take him to a baptism so that he could pick out his baptismal date and after the closing prayer in one lesson, he said that he had picked out a baptismal date!! He wants to be baptized the 28th of June!! He told us the only reason he was unsure of a date was because he wasn´t sure that when we would leave the area, if he would be alone and no one would be there to help him. We loved expaining to him that there are missionaries and members who would continue to teach him and to make sure he´s doing just fine :) Each lesson we teach him, he accepts it and changes a little of his life so that he can live it. For example, he´s willing to live the law of tithing, fast, and fast offerings. I thought that this would be most difficult for him because he doesn´t have a job and for anyone with no job, giving 10% of what little you have would seem a big stretch. But he knows that this is all for the Lord and because of that, he will do it. Wow!! What an example for me and for many others. We´ve been teaching more of the life of Jesus Christ, because he knows that there is a God and that Jesus is our Savior, he just doesn´t know any sort of stories or teachings from the Bible. He has such interesting questions and so in one of our lessons we gave him a Bible and Principios Del Evangelio for his many questions. He also enjoyed the baptism in Cuatro Caminos, so I am very glad that his doubts are set aside. It reminds me of what President Christianson said when i was set apart. he said that i needed to learn the stories from the scriptures and while in the mtc i was confused and didn´t realy know where to start. i realized that yes, the stories from the book of mormon are the ones we need to go to, but for most investigators, they have need of the bible and i realize that i don´t know the bible as well as i thought!! i have lots of reading to do. for example, we are visiting these nigerians who ´´have found Christ´´ and ´´Christ is alive in me and I´m alive in Christ´´ and asks us, ´´when were you born into christ?´´ WHEW. it is really difficult to teach them because we really cant. they´re always up and down from their seats, trying to prove that our interpretations of certain stuff are wrong. i am always confused because, another example, they can´t answer a yes or no question. like, at all. we asked the same thing like 20 times until, well, we left. golly i can go on forever with these dudes. but they´re awesome. they feed us food and they love AFRICAN picante and i am always sweatin´a little whenever we leave. they´re always surprised that a white american can handle hot stuff. HA. sniff yep. i´ve learned from the best.
oh uncle doug! happy late birthday! i meant to send a letter...but i didn´t. forgive me :)
One small miracle this week was meeting a man named Adelson. We met him on the street and there he agreed to meet with us the next day. Teaching him is very interesting, for me, because he doesn´t really show any emotions and he´s very careful when he answers questions. He attended Stake Conference yesterday and was such a trooper. three hours of sitting!! at least he understood things. i sat for that long understanding the beginning...and the end. any whoo...we feel very good about him! He has a strong testimony of God and of Jesus Christ, and I feel that his questions, though unspoken, will be answered while he reads el Libro do Mormón. Which he is reading :)
Last Friday, all of the Barrio 6 missionaries had a dinner for our investigators. The ward was involved and we asked them that if they attended, they needed to bring a nonmember or a menos activo. It was a huge success!! We had food from different parts of the world and they watched to 20 minute José Smith movie. Adelson, though being an investigator, brought his sister and her daughter. Come to find out, his sister and her daughter are very good friends with some ward members! She had visited with missionaries before and was Jehova´s Witness, but I feel very good about this. Adelson doesn´t seem to follow any religion, so hopefully he´ll have a great experience with the Church and set that example for them!!
well, i love you guys!! stay awesome and stay strong. i pray for you and hope to hear from you soon (whitney where are my five page letters. where are dey.)
loves, 
Hermana Smith
oh and have you received my letters? ask gma too. i sent her one.

June 3, 2013

[FYI-Dad became Bishop]  Woowwww Daddy. I didn´t believe it at first because I pulled that joke last week about Jason. But then everyone started talking about it. and bishops office looks pretty empty too. like none of the tidwell stuff i saw before are in there. I think you need a picture of your youngest daughter RIGHT behind you. *sniff* yeaahhh. That would brighten up the room nicely ;)
BUT OH MY GOODNESS I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! you are going to do such an amazing job!! What a growing experience for you!! You turned from not being ´´active`` at all *wink*
to being VERY VERY ACTIVE. heehee. wow. Bishop Smith. hmm...Bissshooopppppp Sssssmmmiiittthhhh....veeery nice!! 
Today we had a bbq at the mission home. it was way fun and I got to play volleyball finally!!! that was probably the highlight of it all. but the jacksons are so sweet. i am so lucky to be serving in this mission! but the rules here are very..lax? no sé but for rules in general, he said to just do what we think is best. 
ok.  that helps mucho.
but anywhoo, about my week!! This week had its up and downs, but they were all worth it!! Each experience hna hansen and i have I try and learn from it. I know I´ll grow somehow!! Even today I got the shock of daddy being a bishop daddy now!!!! I felt my shoulders immedietly feeling stressed for you dad. It really makes me realize that I need to be an example for you in Caldwell as well as my Father in Heaven. hahaa i be you need as much encouragement and unstressiness (new word) as possible. I am so proud of you ! It´s so amazing because I know that we will both learn so much from this. I believe we´re both in the same boat...but different. ya know what i mean? I have been called as a missionary and therefore, I am an example for all and a Representative of Jesus Christ. You are called as a biship with all the other new titles and responsibility that a missionary also has. It really puts it all into perspective!! 
Hermana Hansen and I are doing amazing. We love being missionaries so much and we try and use as much of our spare time as possible doing missionary work. It´s difficult at times, but in the end it is so worth it!
One experience this week really stood out to me. Our investigator, Inussa, is progressing so well. We taught him la ley del ayuno and he said, ¨If we need to sacrifice for the Lord, I´ll do it¨. Wow, Inussa!! You lil stud muffin you. We started our fast with a meal in the chapel and went our ways!! I was so nervous a couple of times throughout the rest of Saturday, but I knew that he could do it!! Sunday morning, when we were greeting people into the chapel, he comes up and say´s, ¨How´s your ayuno going?¨ He is so ready for this next step. He´s so amazing!! Such an example to me.
well familia, i love you mucho!!! you look like a studly dude in your pic dad. sniff. i´m so proud of you!!! 
I love you all!! be safe!
love para siempre
hermana smith
btdubs, my spanish is fine and i don´t really mess up. maybe because i dn´t reallyspeak.ha.